1 Answer

Machine learning is the science of algorithms that detect patterns in data in order to make accurate predictions for future data. I think the following technical skills are a must:

Querying handling data-sets of up to 1M rows and visualizing data of the same size.

Skills in linear algebra and logic as most of the algorithms rely on these two areas in math.

An understanding of optimization algorithms.

If you are looking to start an academic career in machine learning, I recommend applying and attending one of the many machine learning summer schools – they are the fastest way to get a full overview of all the state-of-the-art algorithms and approaches and they typically also have a session on applying machine learning in practice.

If you are looking to start a machine learning career in industry, a good thing is to either participate in a Kaggle competition, try contributing to OpenSource ML projects such as SparkML or Theano (or start one yourself) or try to get an internship; all of these allow you to get first-hand experience in building models, modifying algorithms and iterating to improve accuracy. There is a huge demand for people that would like to work in the field of machine learning and employers typically look for people that have demonstrable interest.